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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29165826">Exploration</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImmortalxSnow/pseuds/ImmortalxSnow'>ImmortalxSnow</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hetalia: Axis Powers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Character Study, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Depends on how you look at it, Depression, Drabble, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Historical Hetalia, Introspection, Loneliness, Loss, Old Fic, Russia has Issues (Hetalia), Russia is not evil, Self-Hatred, Self-Worth Issues, Soviet Union, Stream of Consciousness, Suicidal Thoughts, To An Extent, and lots of self-blame, brief references to violence, no one dies but there's so much, or sad ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:14:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>867</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29165826</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImmortalxSnow/pseuds/ImmortalxSnow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>All alone, Russia watches from the street and reflects as the Soviet flag is lowered and the Russian flag is raised over the Kremlin.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Exploration</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Several years ago, I wrote this fic in response to a challenge with the following terms: no more than two thousand words, and a one-word prompt to follow. The word I was given was "exploration." Appropriately, this is more or less a stream-of-consciousness character study.</p>
<p>Enjoy!</p>
<p>Content warning: suicidal thoughts.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was 7:32 p.m., and Russia was watching his world change.</p>
<p>All the others had left long ago. Some were celebrating Christmas in their homes, with nativity sets and midnight Masses and homemade sweets. Russia, on the other hand, wouldn't celebrate Christmas for another week. He put his hands in his pockets and tried to imagine what it would look like inside the great cathedrals: the aisles flanked by the patriarchs for the first time in decades and children bundled up in pews and the stone of the altar sparkling beneath the chandeliers…</p>
<p>Russia scuffed his boot against the slushy brick of the street. He'd walked far away from the Kremlin to watch the changing of the flags. Perhaps someone would be looking for him inside—Yeltsin, the first boss his people had chosen, or Gorbachev, the man who'd paved the way for this night.</p>
<p>As much as he wanted someone there with him on the lonely street, Russia wasn't ready to go back to the citadel, nor to the river with its crowds watching, waiting. He was too frightened. For someone who adored people and wanted nothing more than friends, he did have a considerable fear of others.</p>
<p>The union was supposed to soften that fear. It was supposed to eradicate the loneliness he'd felt nearly a century ago when hundreds of his people lay in pools of blood, abandoned by their loving father, the tsar. It was supposed to stop him from wanting to kill himself.</p>
<p>And did it? Russia wondered as he tucked his hands into his warm coat pockets and braced himself against the siege of the December wind. He didn't have an answer.</p>
<p>He'd tried. He'd tried so hard. He'd wanted them—his friends, his family—to stay. They could all have been at home together, drinking tea and maybe some of Lithuania's honey spiced vodka, and eating hot cabbage soup and dumplings. And if they'd been the slightest bit unhappy with him, Russia could have done all the dishes and all the cleaning and made breakfast for the next morning. He could have scrubbed the stains in the sink and fixed the water pressure in the upstairs shower and done everyone's laundry. If it would have made them stay. But would it have been enough?</p>
<p>He really didn't have an answer this time.</p>
<p>Some of his people were gathering at a pub on the street corner to celebrate. Russia could hear them laughing, could smell their foaming glasses of beer, could see their smiling faces and their entwined hands. He wondered how they'd all become friends, and in the midst of that questioning, he saw young Lithuania standing before him, face flushed, asking why they couldn't be friends now. Because he wasn't strong enough yet, Russia had replied. And now, as the Soviet flag sank over the Kremlin, Russia wondered if he'd meant not that he wasn't strong enough yet, but that he wasn't good enough yet.</p>
<p>It was so hard to be good, Russia thought, and so easy to be bad. America called him bad even though in the first years of their icy standoff, he'd awakened with frostbitten toes every morning because more people had been stolen from their homes and sent to Siberia in the night. He'd scolded him like a child for reaching space first.</p>
<p>And maybe Russia wasn't exactly what most people would call "good," and maybe he wasn't even sure what they meant when they threw around disembodied words like "good" and "bad," and maybe he'd only been trying so hard to do the right thing.</p>
<p>He'd thought the right thing had been to keep his friends with him, because he loved them and loving people was good, and because they took care of each other, and getting better when you were hurt was good.</p>
<p>But he'd been wrong, because now the Russian flag was flying over the city, and he must be a bad person, because everything had fallen apart.</p>
<p>Russia should have been happy. This was what his people had wanted—they were kissing and hugging and singing at the pub now—and it was what he probably wanted deep down, too, beneath the thick layers of loneliness that these decades of forced companionship had done little to penetrate. And it was certainly what the other countries had wanted. Maybe they would call him “good” now. He had given them what they wanted. And now maybe he could force himself to be happy.</p>
<p>He went home. Not to their old house, but to a small apartment in one of the modern high-rise buildings built after the war. He cried for a bit. And then he pulled a piece of paper out of his empty desk and sat down in the small creaky chair, and he wrote a letter to Lithuania that he knew he'd never send.</p>
<p>But maybe the next day, or the next week, or the next month, he'd write a letter that he could send. And then maybe he'd write a letter to Belarus, and then another to Georgia and one to Armenia.</p>
<p>Maybe he'd find a way to cope. To love. To be good, once and for all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Russia is such a misunderstood character, and it drives me crazy. Can he be cruel? Of course. But does he try to make friends and be a good person and do all the right things? Hell yes. He's complicated, broken, and hurt, not evil.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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